Origami

Folding for Good for Addie

This is six year old Addie.We are Folding for Good for Addie by sending her and her family the Christmas cards she is wishing for this year.

There is a six-year-old girl in Utah who has a mystery brain condition–this is likely her last Christmas on earth. She and her family are wishing for greeting cards from all over the world to help create a holiday they will joyfully remember forever.

Folding friends, please consider Folding for Good this holiday season by sending Addie and her sisters a unique card or origami.

Can one folder change the world? Be a force for Good this holiday season.

To get the creative juices flowing, here are a few examples of origami cards we at Origami Salami produced for another of our Folding for Good initiatives.

Example 2Owen Byrne, President, Origami Salami Queens, New York City, folded these greeting cards for our past initiative to thank our troops for their service.Example 1 I sent a bunch of these simple origami penguin greeting cards with handwritten wish for a past Folding for Good initiative to thank our peacekeeping troops around the world .

By Calista Frederick-Jaskiewicz, Founder and CEO, Origami Salami and Folding for Good

Groups of students at the Dalton School, Manhattan, pulled together to contribute 231 origami cranes to our initiative, “Folding for Good for Franklin Regional.” A friendly fold-a-thon hosted by Origami Salami President Dylan Lee netted 161 cranes—not only did the kids fold and have a great time, but they also listened to pop music and sang Frozen’s “Let it Go” at some point! The Asian Culture Club contributed another 70 cranes to cap off the effort at 231 cranes.

Yesterday, just before the bell sounded for first class at Franklin Regional High School in Western Pennsylvania, a sophomore student went on a “slashing spree,” stabbing 21 fellow students and a security guard before being subdued. At least one student is reported in critical condition, and others have undergone surgeries.

Like other instances of random, senseless violence unleashed on unsuspecting students embarking on an ordinary day in school buildings, I am not at all sure that full explanations or true motives will ever be completely understood. I do know that, in the aftermath, a lot of healing needs to happen. We can help by creating a tangible token of group concern.

We are folding origami peace cranes for the Franklin Regional High School Community. Our goal is to collect 1,000. Please feel free to write any message or wish on your crane. I’ll keep a list of everyone who participates, so be sure to identify yourself in any way that seems comfortable—full name, initials, age, hometown….whatever seems right to you. If you do not wish to identify yourself, that’s OK too.

Mailing, especially international mail, can become quite expensive. I suggest mailing the cranes folded flat then placed in an envelope. I can fluff them up and string them. If you want to string your own, the strand can still mail flat if you make a circle with it. If mailing is just too costly, then email a photo and I will post it to a photo gallery.

We Fold for Good all the time.

We teach STEM through origami, then we do good in the community with it. Today, the Franklin Regional High School community could use a little support. Even if you have folded hundreds of paper cranes, consider doing a few more. And if you have never folded one, this is a great time to learn.

This week, I constructed a Tetris cube, consisting of 7 shapes from 120 pieces of 6in by 6in origami paper. Here is a sequence of photos showing the cube itself, all 6 faces rotated. Then, there are photos of each individual piece. This makes a nice puzzle, and improves focus in both folding it, making the pieces fit into a cube, and putting it together again. You might notice some pieces of tape still in certain places. Once the paper is trained to stay in place, the pieces of tape will be removed. Original instructions can be found here. There are different ways to construct the components of this Tetris cube. This is the one I tried first.

A Year Later… Wishes Handwritten on Thousands of Cranes… Operation Sandy Hook: Peace to You

On Friday, December 14, 2012, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and murdered 20 school children and six teachers and administrators.

We published an invitation to the folders of the world on our Facebook page to join together in folding origami peace cranes. Possibly even 1,000 of them. An Origami Salami Holiday event planned for December 15 in Denver by Seb Tabares became the first public event for “Operation Sandy Hook: Peace to You.” Over the next several months, our origami friends around the world responded with over 10,000 origami cranes and projects incorporating the iconic origami crane.

Over the year, we have not ceased to think about the happenings of Sandy Hook, and pondered what this meant overall, and to our mission as well. Many of the cranes came from schools where leadership took the opportunity to build whole multi-disciplinary modules around learning how to fold the origami crane, and then do good with it, and also help students and parents overcome fear and anxieties about the daily routine of going to that place that is school.

People designed original origami models and later published instructions; new origami clubs were begun in at least six schools; people from Ireland, Germany, Australia, Japan, Hungary, the Philippines, Panama, England, India, Italy, England, Africa and the United States of America participated; many wrote prayers, thoughts, and wishes in their cranes.Families got together and learned the crane too, some folding hundreds. Others were folded by people overcoming their own more personal issues—one in hospital recovering from leukemia treatments, one passing on a family sanbazuru commemorating the passing of an infant family member. It wasn’t an inexpensive undertaking either. Pretty origami papers can cost! Many learners practiced on copy paper until the folding was just right; in fact, one future Origami Salami leader test folded over 100 cranes, but only sent in the best ones. Mailing was the most expensive item, especially international shipments. Some international participants sent theirs to the United States in the suitcases of travelers; others sent photos and are still figuring how to afford the mail costs. Folders in one country petitioned local government to subsidize mail costs. I rented out a Post Office Box to receive it all. As I realized that my cell phone photos were not reproducible, I needed a photographer to assist with quality archiving too.

The efforts of the thousands of people who participated made news from Galway, Ireland to Jonesboro, Tennessee. Crane projects figured into our “Liberty Treehouse” segment (an educational program on GBC-TV in the United States—our story is still in edit and queue); on KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, PA; and at the 2013 Ohio Paper Folders Annual Convention in Columbus.

These treasures became the subject of an October 3-November 7, 2013 exhibit at the world class Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where folks believe in doing good with science too.

The leadership of Origami Salami and Folding for Good nearly doubled. And our able and talented leaders staged group events in their homes, clubs, and communities.

Great contacts have been made with officials in Sandy Hook Elementary. A new school will be constructed—the old one is being razed. Ours is a project of great hope, universal empathy, and solidarity. I think we will wait for that new school to conclude these efforts.

Links to our photo archives are below, along with a listing of many of the organizations which participated and supported us. The many individuals persons are noted in or Facebook archive.

For more about Folding for Good’s “Operation Sandy Hook: Peace to You,” please visit our Facebook photo album archives:

Zachary Ligh, President, Origami Salami Eta and Folding for Good 7, and his display at the Sugar Land Library showcasing his traditional origami and Yodas, Darth Papers, and Han Foldos! What a great way to celebrate World Origami Days!

Here is a guest post from Nathan Boerner, President, Origami Salami Beta & Folding for Good 2, Cincinnati, OH. Nathan has taken top honors in the annual Origami by Children competition sponsored by Origami USA for seven consecutive years. Lately, Nathan has begun diagramming his original models, and has already published one of them. Thank you for contributing to our blogspot Nathan.

I’ve been folding cranes and butterflies to donate to my church youth group. The kids are putting on a craft sale to raise money for World Vision. I made cranes in rainbow colors to string into crane towers, and folded LaFosse’s origami butterflies.

Lately, I’ve been taking my original models and diagramming them on Excel. I’ve finished my Jumpy Squirrel model and am working on my Alpaca model. The Origami USA website has an online store called the Source. It circulates books, CDs, DVDs, paper and other supplies, and diagrams, one of which is mine.

My Jumpy Squirrel model won a place in a Origami by Children contest, and will be traveling to libraries and schools in the USA.